SPONGIA AND POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) and HOMOEOPATHY

Internal Medicine/Knowledge of Disease

PTSD

Post traumatic stress disorder is a constellation of condition that arises in response to exposure to traumatic event or series of traumatic events such as

  • Exposure to actual or threatened death,
  • Serious injury, or sexual violence
  • Or chronic, constant, threatening exposure to violence causing constant concern for safety and life.
  • Natura disaster/ war
  • Abuse (sexual, emotional, physical)

The trauma can be either

  • Directly experiencing by the person,
  • Witnessing a person experiencing trauma,
  • Or learning that the traumatic event occurred to a close family member or friend.

Following the trauma the processing of traumatic event is affected in the brain and the trauma maintains its intensity in the memory as it first happened, modifying cognition, mood, causing somatic experiences, and behaviour changes, leading to chronic impairments and an increased risk of comorbid psychiatric illnesses and susceptibility to suicide. 

Presentation includes but is not limited to:

  • Intrusive memories or nightmares
  • Avoidance behaviours
  • Negative changes in mood and cognition,
  • Heightened arousal.
  • Dissociative symptoms 
  • Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive thoughts associated with the traumatic event.
  • Flashbacks, in which the individual may feel or act that the traumatic event is happening again.
  • Marked physiological reactivity such as increased heart rate and blood pressure on exposure to traumatic reminders

SPONGIA

The following symptomatology indicates that SPONGIA can be one of the leading remedies for the above-mentioned presentation of PTSD. Each of the following symptoms can be corelated with the phenomenon of PTSD.

From various sources:

  • Anxiety with feeling as if will die or suffocate
  • Anxiety in sleep, wakes up sudden anxious and sudden, with sense of suffocation, violent loud cough, great alarm agitation, anxiety and difficult respiration
  • Inclination to weep during sleep

Clarke (A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica)

  • Rouses up in sleep as if in a great fright.
  • She is very timid, and is esp. pursued and incessantly tormented by a frightful scene of some mournful event of the past
  • < When thinking of her symptoms.
  • Sad, anxious, frightful dreams
  • Excessive moral and physical dejection.
  • Attacks of heat with anxiety; heat and redness of face and perspiration.

The Encyclopaedia of Pure Materia Medica

  • Anxiety, as if a misfortune would befall him, which he seemed to foresee, she is very fearful, and tormented by a frightful image of a past sad event. She was very easily frightened, and started at every trifle; it always seemed that fear shoot into her feet, and afterwards they seemed to remain heavy,

This kind of presentation can also cover following disorders

D/D

  • Generalized anxiety disorder
  • Panic attacks
  • Sleep disorders or parasomnias

(Many medicines esp. ones which cover AILMENTS FROM FRIGHT/ FEAR will be useful in PTSD and related conditions. Each drug behaves differently when faced with a situation. The final remedy selection depends on this reaction and presentation of patient, its PQRS and analysis by the physician.)

Some Rubrics from Complete Dynamis Repertory, that can be used in PTSD

  • Fright Fear, agg, ailments from
    • Accident from site of an
    • Mental and emotional consequences
    • Prolonged

etc

Reference

  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  • https://www.psychiatry.org/
  • https://www.who.int/
  • The Encyclopaedia of Pure Materia Medica by T F Allen
  • A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica by Clarke
  • Boericke Materia Medica
  • The Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica by Hering
  • Complete Dynamis Repertory

NB: This similarity is found only while studying the medicine from a pathological point of view. The confirmation can only be done by applying this knowledge in such a clinical condition in a patient.

This kind of approach is especially helpful when:

  • The patient is not able to give refined symptoms and sensations
  • One is not able to find any characteristic symptom or
  • The attendants are not able to give one,
  • There is time constraint or
  • The physician has not seen the patient but has received a diagnosis from attendants.
  • Pathology is advanced enough to wipe out the PQRS of the case.

The results in such prescriptions would nonetheless depend on the accuracy of diagnosis and its pathological similarity to chosen medicine.

(This post is for the practitioners of Homoeopathy and not for patients for diagnosis and treatment of the said entity.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

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